


I Once Was Lost, But Now Am Found

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Literal Sleeping Together, Pre-Relationship, Spoilers For Episode 64 of Campaign 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: The route through the Barbed Fields had been shorter, and time had felt very much of the essence. That’s why Fjord had pushed so hard for heading through the heart of the final site of the battles that had taken place during the Calamity. He should have known that there would be dangers in such a place. He should have known that there would be things there worse than the ghost stories the other orphans had told him when he was young to make him cry.





	I Once Was Lost, But Now Am Found

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, there was a kiss last episode and Fjord taking a ton of psychic damage from a creature that's so lost and lonely it gives death hugs *and* Jester had trouble sleeping, what was I supposed to do, *not* write about any of that?

The route through the Barbed Fields had been shorter, and time had felt very much of the essence. That’s why Fjord had pushed so hard for heading through the heart of the final site of the battles that had taken place during the Calamity. He should have known that there would be dangers in such a place. He should have known that there would be things there worse than the ghost stories the other orphans had told him when he was young to make him cry.

_Should have know that the ocean depths hid many monsters, should have known better than to go for a walk late at night away from camp, should have known—_

The thing in front of him, gray and shambling with eyes as blank and white as a month old corpse, suddenly lurches towards Fjord with a speed that should be impossible for something that looks so frail. He doesn’t even have time to scream as the five hooked arms of the creature pierce into his sides and he’s being drawn close. The creature wails again, louder, sorrow spiking through Fjord’s brain like glass as his vision goes white and—

_Fjord is six years old and running away from the orphanage, away from the teasing and the shoving, away from would-be parents who don’t even glance in his direction, from caretakers that look at him with barely disguised disgust. He’s running down unfamiliar streets, rain pouring down as solid as the sea, soaking him to the skin and mixing with the tears running down his face. No one looks at the lost, wailing, half-orc child, and when Fjord somehow finds his way back to the orphanage hours later, none of his caregivers seem to have noticed he was even gone._

_Years later, Fjord is lost and wet again, the ocean depths so dark that he can’t even see which direction his last bubbles of air go in when they leave his lungs. What finds him then, past his last moments, should have stayed hidden and lost and forgotten._

_Months ago, Fjord is in a cage too small for one person, his two companions jammed painfully against him. The cart has been traveling for days and he has no idea where he is, where any of them are. Dizzy with hunger, all he knows is that no one is coming for him. They’ll come for the others maybe, but not for him. This is his fault. If he hadn’t lead the others away, they wouldn’t be lost now—_

Fjord doesn’t realize that the creature has been holding him so tightly that he can’t breathe until it crumples in front of him and he’s on his knees, gasping. He feels the hexblade’s curse give some of the creature’s life-force to him, can taste it in the back of his throat like tears. There is a cold and hollow ache in his head and his blood and his bones, an echo of a sorrow so deep that it makes him want to sit down on the ground and cry. But he can’t. Not now, not later, not ever.

Jester stands a few feet away, holy symbol still raised in front of her, her eyes full of concern even as her face still bears a grin of determination and satisfaction. The sight of her makes the nauseating ache inside of him lessen as he gets to his feet. He feels like his heart is going to burst from gratitude, or is that from some other emotion?

“Thanks Jessie,” he says, but it’s not enough, he knows it’s not, how could it be?

“You’re welcome,” Jester says back, so soft he barely hears it.

Fjord doesn’t plan what he does next, and maybe that’s for the best. Suddenly he’s running toward Jester, bending down to kiss her cheek. It’s still not enough, it’s just shorthand for the kiss he wants to give her and the words he doesn’t have time to say. She’s probably disappointed that it’s not a grand kiss like something out of those novels she likes to read, but he can’t turn to see her reaction. Instead he gathers eldritch energy in his hands so that he can help protect everyone while his heart pounds madly in his chest and his lips still feel the ghost of pressure against them.

***********

Fjord falls asleep quickly that night, but he does not rest easily or well, his nightmares full of things with too many arms and dead, sightless eyes. It’s awful, but not as awful as some of his other dreams, and he wakes with a quiet gasp instead of choking on a lungful of seawater. He lays still for a moment, staring at the night sky through the dome and listening to his friends softly breathing in their sleep. All except one. There’s a scratching sound he’s familiar with, the sound of an ink pen against paper, accompanied by soft muttering. Jester talking to herself, or maybe her god, as she draws. Fjord can’t make out the words, but her tone isn’t her usual, cheerful one. She sounds deeply unhappy.

Fjord rolls over in Jester’s direction. Her pen glows softly with magical light as she sketches, casting shadows over her face and causing her deep frown to seem even deeper, like something dark should come swimming up from the depths of it. “Jester?” It’s a whisper, but she startles as if it had been a shout, covering the light of her pen with one hand, light peeking through her fingers.

“Fjord! Did I wake you up? I’m sorry!” Her whisper is louder than his, and next to her, Beau mumbles something and rolls over.

Fjord shakes his head and sits up, moving a little bit closer to Jester to make talking easier. “Nah, I was already awake. You got nothing to be sorry for.” He takes a closer look at her, at the slump of her shoulders, the agitated twitching of her tail. “Jester, have you slept at all?”

Jester bites her lip and shakes her head. “And I know I _need_ to,” she says before he can say anything. “And I _tried,_ but I just couldn’t. So I thought if I was awake _anyway_ , I could at least tell the Traveller about my day.” She taps the page of her sketchbook, and Fjord takes that as an invitation to look.

There’s a lot happening on that page, spiky, angular letters of a language he doesn’t know interspersed with drawings. There’s Jester’s mother, leaning out of a tower window like a princess in a fairy tale. There are two sketches of people he doesn’t know, faces in profile, that look like Caleb’s descriptions of Astrid and Eodwulf. The last drawing on the page is one of those things they fought earlier, and while the hooked arms seem to loom menacingly, the white eyes are filled with tears. It’s then that Fjord notices that it’s not just the monster on the page that looks sad, it’s everyone else Jester has drawn there as well.

Maybe his gaze lingers on the picture of the monster for too long, because Jester speaks up. “They just looked really sad,” she says, and it’s quieter than a whisper.

“Are you sad, Jester?” Fjord asks as if he didn’t already know the answer, as if he hadn’t asked that question before on a night when stars had shone above and jellyfish had shone underneath the waves. But he _has_ to ask because if he doesn’t, he knows she’ll be tempted to put on a mask for him and pretend everything is fine. He knows that because he’s done it himself, with the others, and that’s she’s done it as well. Some nights when he’s almost asleep, he jerks awake because he swears he hears Jester humming, like she had after they had been captured by the Iron Shepherds, trying to keep everyone’s morale up.

“I shouldn’t have written that letter to Astrid,” Jester says, not looking at him, and there is the faintest of tremors in her voice. “I just— I didn’t _know_ , you know? We had just gotten back to Zadash after— everything, and we were all so— and I knew it would make Nott happy and I thought it would make Caleb happy and that he _liked_ Astrid and I guess maybe he had once upon a time but I didn’t know all that other stuff and now my Momma might be—“

Tears spill from Jester’s eyes and she looks so _lost_ as she puts her hands up to her wet cheeks. “Oh _no_ ,” she says, and she sounds so utterly dismayedthat it nearly breaks Fjord’s heart. “Oh no, I’m sorry.”

Like before, Fjord doesn’t think about what he does next, he doesn’t have to. He just opens his arms and suddenly Jester is filling the space between them, crying so very quietly onto his shoulder. Part of Fjord is upset that Caleb hasn’t been more upfront about his past, that what they didn’t know and what they probably still don’t know might come back to hurt them all. Another part of Fjord completely understands where Caleb is coming from, because how long had it taken _him_ to tell the others about his strange dreams? And he still hadn’t told everyone about what had happened the other night, about how upset Uk’otoa was with him and what that might mean, somewhere down the road.

“It’s not your fault,” Fjord says softly as he holds Jester close. “And your mother is going to be fine. You sent that letter months ago, right?” Months ago, when he himself had been raw with grief and guilt, had thrown himself into a quest looking for answers and had only come away with more questions. “And nothing has happened since then.”

“That’s true.” Jester sniffles into his armor. “I just worry, you know? And I miss her. So much is happening, and I was all excited because Caleb learned that teleportation spell and I thought I was going to get to visit her and then everything just happened all at once. Not that _this_ isn’t important or anything. I just—really miss her.”

“I know,” Fjord says soothingly. “We’ll get back there as soon as we can. And until then your mother knows who to watch out for, and she’s surrounded by people who’ll do anything to keep her safe, I’m sure.” It won’t matter if these wizards are as deadly as Caleb can be, but he doesn’t say that, of course. He does honestly think that if something hasn’t happened by now that it probably won’t, that Caleb has been jumping at shadows for so long that he doesn’t know how to stop. Fjord hopes he’s right about that. He’s been wrong about so many other things.

“Yeah,” Jester says, and she raises her head a little to look at him, but she doesn’t pull away. “I’m sorry for crying all over you. I made you all soggy, probably.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Fjord says, and smiles at her. “And I’m wearing the right armor for it, after all. You could cry a whole ocean of tears and I’d just float right to the surface.”

Jester actually chuckles at that, and the small smile she gives him is the best thing Fjord has laid his eyes on all night. “I bet a whole bunch of weird things would live in an ocean of tears,” she says as she settles her head on his chest.

“In your tears? Absolutely,” Fjord agrees. “Just whole schools of seahorses with unicorn horns.”

“And rainbow jellyfish,” Jester mutters sleepily.

“And rainbow jellyfish,” Fjord agrees.

Minutes pass as they both hold each other in silence. When Fjord looks down at Jester to suggest that they should both get some sleep, he realizes that she’s already fallen asleep in his arms, tears drying on her cheeks, her breathing deep and even. He shifts his weight, and Jester’s face creases into a frown as she makes a sleepy, protesting sound and her arms tighten around him just a fraction, an altogether more pleasant embrace than the one he had suffered earlier in battle.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Fjord whispers, and the next time he moves, Jester doesn’t protest. He lies down, taking her with him, one arm curved protectively around her back as he closes his eyes.

_Fjord is heading out of Port Damali with no answers to his questions, no leads, and no idea where to go next, strange magic buzzing under his skin and the weight of a mysterious sword on his hip. He had almost died out at sea, and to be honest he’s still not sure about the ‘almost’ part, the memory of salt water burning his lungs and everything going dark and cold is not something he thinks he’s ever going to forget. In fact he’s still thinking about it when he collides with someone on the street and they both go tumbling to the cobblestones, the stranger landing on top of him._

_Fjord blinks up at a pair of deep purple eyes and for a moment is lost for words, or maybe the breath just got knocked out of him in the fall._

_“I’m sorry!” The blue tiefling on top of him says as she gets to her feet and offers him her hand. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”_

_‘There you are,’ a part of him thinks, as if he has just found something he had been searching for. Out loud he says, “I wasn’t looking where I was going either, I’m afraid.” He takes her hand, and is surprised at just how easily the tiefling hauls him to his feet. A memory sparks dimly in the back of his mind, of two young blue tiefling women running down the street near the Withered Bird Inn in Nicodranas, only one of them casting a shadow in the noonday sun, the duplicate vanishing as he had watched._

_“Have I seen you before?” They both say at once, then there’s a pause as they both laugh._

_They end up getting a drink, (whiskey for him, milk for her) and when they leave town they walk side by side, together. Fjord still barely has any idea where he’s going, and yet suddenly, with Jester beside him, he no longer feels so lost._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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